Hollywood Hip Revel in Privacy of Old Chateau Marmont: Travel

by Jason H. Harper

Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) -- The Chateau Marmont is Hollywood’s most notorious hotel, so you could hardly call it a hidden gem. Yet the fanciful 1930s-era mansion is famed for both discretion and privacy, important considerations during paparazzi-mad periods like last week’s run-up to the Oscars.

You arrive at the hotel on a narrow driveway off Sunset Boulevard that leads to a low, hidden garage where a tiny, creaking elevator goes straight up to the main floor.

Otherwise you can hoof it up a gloomy stairway to the lobby and cramped check-in nook. Grand? Not a bit. Yet that’s part of the allure of the place, where the Hollywood history is as thick as the grime on the baseboards.

The Chateau has been run by hotelier Andre Balazs since 1990, and while it was remodeled, it was never homogenized. Akin to New York’s Chelsea Hotel, the grittiness is hallowed.

There’s history here, too. The hotel’s often-naughty guests have included Errol Flynn, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable and James Dean. Led Zeppelin members once drove motorcycles inside, and in 1982 John Belushi overdosed in his garden bungalow.

It’s fair to say that the hotel’s 63 rooms both are and aren’t the point. The bungalows, set near the pool behind a locked fence and high hedges, are 600 square feet and the more private option. There are also one- and two-bedroom suites available. I booked the cheapest room: a standard in the main building for $370.

White, No Clutter

Room 16 is right off the lobby: a big square space with tall ceilings and wooden floors. It’s remarkably clutter-free, with no hanging art on the eggshell walls and otherwise only a white wooden armoire, two old chairs, an antique writing desk and an LG flat-screen television.

The baseboards need a good cleaning and a crawl-space trap door on the bathroom ceiling has oily black finger smudges. The bathroom is redone in marble and has a big shower.

If a bit beaten, there’s plenty of character, and large windows let in gobs of light. I like it much better than, say, the quasi-chic cookie-cutter rooms found at the new Hotel Palomar in Westwood, 15 minutes away.

Unfortunately an irksome beep emanates from an ancient speaker above the door, which I ask to be fixed. In the middle of the night I discover that it hasn’t been. So in the morning I’m moved to a much larger space on a higher floor with a full kitchen, including an antique Wedgewood four-burner stove and classic GE refrigerator. My favorite detail is the green Formica kitchen table.

Savory Bar Food

In the evening, a friend and I stop by Bar Marmont, in a separate building on Sunset. Chef Carolynn Spence used to cook at New York’s Spotted Pig, and the bar food includes very non- L.A. yet savory choices like prunes wrapped in bacon and homemade potato chips. It can be a scene, though it’s quiet this Monday night.

We retire back to the hotel lobby, where waitresses serve cocktails to groups sitting in couches and non-matching chairs. The space is dark and cloistered; you can’t quite make out faces. A host in a long black overcoat says the room is full, yet once he learns we’re guests, the attitude completely changes and within minutes we get seats.

This is one of my favorite things about the Chateau: The staff seems solicitous and protective of even their non-famous guests.

The final morning I take my laptop down to the pool among the other writer-like or movie types tapping at computers or talking quietly into cell phones. Not a single person is wearing a bathing suit.

No wonder so many guests make prolonged stays, choosing the hotel as a West Coast base. You can’t help but feel if you’d just hang out long enough, the Chateau’s secrets would start to reveal themselves. If you don’t mind a bit of grime, that’s pretty beguiling.

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